Replacing Trump & Chewing Gum at the Same Time
February protests nationwide counted: 937 in 2017 vs 2085 in 2025
The Tesla Takedown day of global action included picket lines and more at 253 locations world-wide, of those, 200 were in the United States. In San Diego there were three Tesla dealers targeted, in Carlsbad (?), Encinitas (800+attendees), and UTC La Jolla (300 attendees).
As promised, the protests were non-violent. (I feel compelled to put this descriptor in the second paragraph because MAGA is trying to pitch the notion that the Takedown actions are violent.)
There was little local legacy media coverage, but then again, it doesn’t really matter. Local social media, activist clubs, and Indivisible chapters provided photos and commentary, along with being the vehicle for participant recruitment at the Tesla Takedown events.
As I’ve said in the past, the decentralized nature of anti-Trump protest is a feature, not a bug. I know for me personally, the resurgence of affinity groups in my orbit has been very encouraging. Two alt media platforms frequented by resistors are rapidly growing: Twitter-derived BlueSky (34 million users), and Substack (20 million active monthly users, 5 million paid subscriptions). Other media are being created in response to that growth, i.e., podcasts to Substack writers.
The important thing is the way this protest movement has evolved and grown since the middle of February. Tesla sales are down. Tesla owners are dumping their vehicles. And Tesla stockholder in chief Elon Musk has lost $121 billion (or more) in stock value.
The man from South Africa who says empathy is a weakness came close to tears in an interview about his company’s woes. I can only hope that a big black mark goes next to his name in future historical accounts, provided we’re still allowed to have them.
Let’s pull back for the big picture…
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One of the ways our national discourse is different in the months following the Trump45 and Trump47 inaugurations is the degree to which capitulation of the political establishment has taken place.
The people, on the other hand, are not giving up. The lack of a defined leadership in resistance to Trump47 administration actions doesn’t fit neatly into the kinds of narratives that have historically been portrayed by the media.
There are no “pink hats.” Protests are mostly localized. The closest to any normal story lines about the resistance to the Project2025/MAGA/DOGE agenda that are being served up are accounts of the AOC/Bernie rallies.
The public has been treated to endless ‘Democrats in disarray’ stories about elected officials in DC not forcibly (enough) responding to Trump administration executive orders. Some of these excuses for free airtime look and sound like they were written for any of a half dozen immediately identifiable totalitarian regimes.
Here’s the truth: In town halls, streets, campuses and car dealerships across the country, people have raised their voices in opposition to the imposition of an agenda that directly and indirectly harms citizens from many walks of life. Divergent communities of people who didn’t have a cause to come together around, are discovering causes to unite in action around and making the connection with the big picture.
Lots of people are getting involved. More than in 2017. You might not know it from reports in the legacy media, but the facts tell a powerful story:
Via Axios:
The Crowd Counting Consortium, a Harvard Kennedy School and University of Connecticut research project that measures political crowds, tallied at least 2,085 protests in February compared to 937 in Feb. 2017. And preliminary numbers for March suggest that the count will surpass 3,000, Erica Chenoweth, the CCC's co-director, told Axios.
I think it would just be a mistake to think that if there isn't some kind of big, visible, feet-to-the to the pavement kind of action, that there isn't meaningful, important and impactful protests happening," Chenoweth said.
Conspiracy minded folks are blaming the media for too little (the left) or too much (MAGA) coverage of these protests. I’m sure that ad based media have executives who are looking over their shoulders at Trump-related reprisals; the fear and anxiety felt in the general population doesn’t exclude the press.
A quick survey of reporting on recent Tesla protests shows the word “dozens” used to describe both the number of sites and the number of people attending. Most publications/airwave media I saw either used exclusively or incorporated the Associated Press account. In fact, there were hundreds and even thousands of people participating; more importantly, they created impressions in a wider slice of the population than a centralized event.
The Verge actually sent reporters to 10 Tesla Takedown locations around the country, and they actually talked to people protesting, noted that there were very good dogs in one location, and even checked in with counter protesters in a couple locations.
A snip:
On a busy shopping street in Georgetown, DC, protesters are dancing outside a Tesla showroom to everything from “Hot to go,” to “Under Pressure,” to the viral TikTok hostile takeover song. They’re wearing a mix of shiny boas, boat captain hats, and floral shirts. The loosely boat-themed dance party has been attracting a steady stream of honks from passing cars, and many pedestrians are stopping to gleefully take pictures. “Nazi cars sold here,” says one sign, “Porsche = fast, Ferrari = faster, Tesla = fascist,” says another.
“Part of how fascism operates is they want people to be fearful,” says Sara Steffens, part of a team that calls themselves Dance Against DOGE. Steffens dons a floral outfit and a captain’s hat that she says symbolizes how the people are in charge of their destiny, rather than Trump and Musk. “Bullies operate on fear and they want us to be afraid of them … so this is like a full force showing.”
CNN also did a decent job of interviewing Tesla Takedown participants.
This coming weekend there will be all-purpose/all-issue rallies in hundreds of American cities including San Diego (Sat, Noon, Civic Center Plaza). This will be (I hope) a coming together of all the various subgroups, associations, and individuals who have lent their voices to these protests in some small way.
It’s true that a wide variety of dissatisfied humans have said they’ll be participating; at this point it is the totality of the voices being raised that is most important. And, no, nobody’s “hijacked” the April 5 protests. George Soros, the Democratic party, and Satan have not sent money to people willing to show up for democracy, science, civil rights, and free speech– that’s what MAGA does for Trump Rallies.
Yet to be determined will be the participation of the nation’s union members. Leadership of several unions and associations (including the San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council and the California Federation of Labor Unions) are saying the right things, but actions will speak louder than words. Will unions choose to keep to their own? Or will they take their places at the front of the parade?
How we get out of this hell and win the future by Jordan Zakarin offers up a three pronged approach for moving forward that’s broad enough to include progressive and liberal interests.
Take Back the Culture
Give People Things to Do
Give People Something to Fight For
A keep-it-simple-agenda could draw from FDR’s Four Freedoms:
freedom of speech
freedom of worship
freedom from want
freedom from fear.
Note that the corporate-sponsored, anti-union center-left is pitching its own agenda of deregulation and rejecting wealth redistribution, an “abundance” message with no place for anybody but themselves to run the show. It all sounds wonderful and even a bit utopic, but it ignores billionaire hijacking of governance.
If a group isn’t talking class/inequity, then they’re not offering anything worth fighting for. We’re here in large part because some people got so wealthy that they felt entitled to rule. They should be paying for the reconstitution of the damage they’ve wreaked.
I say show up. Show unity. And look for a better future, that you have the opportunity to help build. One thing is for sure, we’ll never go back to the past that we (sort of) liked.
The Partnership: The Secret History of the War in Ukraine by Adam Entous at The New York Times
But ultimately the partnership strained — and the arc of the war shifted — amid rivalries, resentments and diverging imperatives and agendas.
The Ukrainians sometimes saw the Americans as overbearing and controlling — the prototypical patronizing Americans. The Americans sometimes couldn’t understand why the Ukrainians didn’t simply accept good advice.
Where the Americans focused on measured, achievable objectives, they saw the Ukrainians as constantly grasping for the big win, the bright, shining prize. The Ukrainians, for their part, often saw the Americans as holding them back. The Ukrainians aimed to win the war outright. Even as they shared that hope, the Americans wanted to make sure the Ukrainians didn’t lose it.
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Pluralistic: #RedForEd rides again in LA by Cory Doctorow
The last time the LA teachers struck was in the midst of the 2019 #RedForEd wave, which kicked off during the last Trump presidency. All across the country, teachers walked out – even in states where they were legally prohibited from doing so. These strikes were hugely successful, because communities across the nation rallied around their teachers, and the teachers returned the favor, making community justice part of their goals.
This was true across America, but it was especially true in Los Angeles, where the teachers were militant, united, relentless, and brilliant. The story of the 2019 LA Teachers' Strike is recounted in Jane McAlevey's essential 2021 book A Collective Bargain, which recounts her history as a union organizer on multiple successful unionization drives and strikes, including that fateful teachers' strike
McAlevey learned her tactics from a lineage of organizers who predated the legalization of unions and the National Labor Relations Act. Accordingly, her organizing method didn't rely on bosses obeying the law, or governments sticking up for workers. She fought for victories that were won by pure worker power. The 2019 LA teachers' strike is a fantastic example, a literal textbook case about rallying support from the entire shop – including affiliated workers, like bus-drivers – and then broadening that massive support by bringing in related trades (the LA charter school teachers walked out with their public school comrades), and the community.
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Trump says he’s considering ways to serve a third term as president by Chris Megerian at Associated Press
He suggested that Americans would go along with a third term because of his popularity. He falsely claimed to have “the highest poll numbers of any Republican for the last 100 years.”
Gallup data shows President George W. Bush reaching a 90% approval rating after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. His father, President George H.W. Bush, hit 89% following the Gulf War in 1991.
Trump has maxed out at 47% in Gallup data during his second term, despite claiming to be “in the high 70s in many polls, in the real polls.”
